Yeah I am still leaning to the Pro even with the upgrade option. I am probably buying from Best Buy so the only reason I would go Plus is they didn't have the Pro in.

If they had offered a 2TB model I could see opting for that over the 3TB model and upgrading later to if someone got a 4TB working easily.

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I was going to get it from BestBuy but their 4 year extended warranty prices are rather high. It's $80 for the Plus and I guess the Pro will be at least $100.

Someone had mentioned that BestBuy sells the Amazon Kindle Gift cards and that they can be used to buy anything at Amazon. In my area Amazon will start charging taxes on 9/1. So I was thinking about getting the Kindle gift cards from Best buy, that way i can use my Reward Zone dollars and gift cards to purchase them. Then just purchase the Plus for $400, without taxes at Amazon, and also get a 3TB WD AV drive for $137 from Amazon.

Or just get the pro for $63 more from Amazon and not have to worry about the warranty from TiVo being honored.

That's THE ONE I was talking about in an earlier post in this thread, with the huge single platter "disk packs" that came in flying-saucer shaped cases. I was in charge of swapping out one per day, known as the "scratch pack".

Boy, do I feel old!

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While the disk packs in the 844-21 were removable, they looked more like hat boxes than flying saucers.

"CDC Model 881 Disk Packs are used with the 844-21
Disk Storage Units. The 881 consists of a stack of eleven,
14-inch diameter, magnetic recording disks. Nineteen
surfaces are used for data recording and one is used for
permanently-recorded positioning information."

During "system time" at FSU (this was in the 70's), we would swap out one of the packs and take the rest of the drives off line to avoid screwing up the production data when testing system mods.

I think we will see the price on the Plus and Pro drop a bit, but mostly the Pro to make it more attractive. Look, this is NOT about the DYI folks on this forum, we/they have NEVER been suckered into the flagship models. The pricing for the Pro is all about the majority of the people who buy TiVo's who are NOT DYI folks and will pay more for the greater capacity of the Pro. I think TiVo had lots of meetings about this and feel the data bears out their pricing for the Pro. I suspect the Pro will be a favorite of Home Theater installers who will gladly spend other (rich) people's money, while the affluent middle class will find the Plus quite sufficient, and OTA folks have no choice, and they may be the least knowledgeable group. We are still the minority. There are lots of those who know nothing more about TiVo than it is a good DVR and they want one. Now, how much money do I hand over to you Mr. Best Buy sales clerk?

I was going to get it from BestBuy but their 4 year extended warranty prices are rather high. It's $80 for the Plus and I guess the Pro will be at least $100.

Someone had mentioned that BestBuy sells the Amazon Kindle Gift cards and that they can be used to buy anything at Amazon. In my area Amazon will start charging taxes on 9/1. So I was thinking about getting the Kindle gift cards from Best buy, that way i can use my Reward Zone dollars and gift cards to purchase them. Then just purchase the Plus for $400, without taxes at Amazon, and also get a 3TB WD AV drive for $137 from Amazon.

Or just get the pro for $63 more from Amazon and not have to worry about the warranty from TiVo being honored.

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Based off the prices of receivers, it looks like $69 is the 4 year for the Plus and $89 is the 4 year for the Pro. You can see the Plus price since you can add it to cart, but I used a receiver for $599 to get the Pro price. I believe it is based off price now. I show $69 for the Plus at 4 years not $80 unless you included tax.

Yes you can buy Kindle cards usually in $25 increments or so. Some stores do have the blank ones where you can create your own.

Squaretrade is $69 for the Plus and $89 for the Pro, but they do have sales sometimes. Of course I don't know if they qualify for lifetime replacement.

You mentioned "DYI people" a dozen times in your post. As in "Do Yourself In"?

Sorry, I couldn't resist!

I agree with the one platform (box) part, but TiVo would never put exactly the same software on both versions (MSO & retail), unless it was meant to be so flexible, that the MSOs could have some backdoor way in and tweak it however they like. Now that I typed that, I am thinking maybe that is the case, and that's where this possible overlooked upgrade ability came from.

In this thread, the upgrader stated, more than once, that the box updated itself TWICE. Maybe the first update was the MSO software, and the second the retail software. Since the larger drive was the first drive it saw, the MSO software allowed it. Since it was already there, the retail software didn't flinch. What if it had been started with the original drive first?

One thing we don't know is if there was anything on the original drive. Maybe it wasn't a blank drive. Maybe if it had been allowed to boot, the bigger drive wouldn't have worked the way it did... Or, maybe if they pulled the bigger drive, and attempted again, it wouldn't work again.

Really, there's a lot of things we still don't know. I expect it to take some time, before we can truly be confident in what we know, or think we do.

The upgrader could do the community a great service by doing a full DVRBARS backup of the unbooted original drive, and getting it sent to ggieseke, the author of the software. Maybe there is something on it, as opposed to it being the assumed blank slate. Perhaps the S/N or something else on the drive is what maybe should have flagged the unit as retail...

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This is all legitimate speculation on your part. My personal suspicion is that it will in fact work with any drive big enough to prep the image... regardless of if someone turns it on first or not.

One thing's for sure, we will have an answer soon enough.

Feeling pretty smug about my Plus purchase now. I don't need 3TB but 2TB might be kind of nice to have since it will only set me back $90.

I wonder if this is really the reason that Weaknees didn't start out with upgrade drives? That they have not been able to copy any drives yet?

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Great minds think alike (every now and then).

We don't know what, if anything is on the drives that come in the Roamios.

If nothing, then there's still the possibility that the drive's S/N is what is supposed to trigger what gets downloaded to it. Perhaps a S/N mismatch triggers something that wasn't meant to happen.

Even if the drive is completely blank, they can still do a sector-by-sector raw copy, resulting in copying a lot of zeroes. So, if there's anything on it, they should still be able to copy it. The hard part is what to do once they have copied the original, to a larger target drive (particularly a 4TB one, which is what everybody and their uncle, wants). Same if they let the original boot, then go through the copy process. How to expand from there? That must be what they are working on. I highly doubt they haven't been selling/shipping drive kits, because they don't have the right size torx driver in stock...

When comparing the price of a DIY upgrade of a Plus to a Pro, one should not forget to reduce the true cost of the upgrade by the value of the perfectly usable 1TB drive that you will be removing from the Plus.

When comparing the price of a DIY upgrade of a Plus to a Pro, one should not forget to reduce the true cost of the upgrade by the value of the perfectly usable 1TB drive that you will be removing from the Plus.

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And therein lies the rub (I think I said that right).

If you buy from weaknees, they keep the original drive and can profit from selling it to somebody else. Do they then become the warranty service provider for you?

If you keep the drive, you have a conundrum: If TiVo actually sticks to turning a blind-eye if you need a warranty repair/replace, and you've been running an upgrade, as long as you sneak the original drive back in, then you can't sell it, or make it an important part of something else. It gets to take up space somewhere "just in case...".

I always hated leaving a stack of perfectly good original drives, doing nothing, "just in case...".

When comparing the price of a DIY upgrade of a Plus to a Pro, one should not forget to reduce the true cost of the upgrade by the value of the perfectly usable 1TB drive that you will be removing from the Plus.

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I am one of those who would keep the drive on hand as a backup so I don't consider it an extra drive.

While I don't figure it was your intent, I feel you've just proven my original point in the *complete*, unedited, original post you partially quoted from.

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I assumed you were referring to the original additional know how from before 11.0k that meant either jmfs on the HD or HD XL (provided your source drive did not have an Apple Free partition anywhere raising the total number to 16), or something involving hex editing and partition coalescing.

If you buy from weaknees, they keep the original drive and can profit from selling it to somebody else. Do they then become the warranty service provider for you?

If you keep the drive, you have a conundrum: If TiVo actually sticks to turning a blind-eye if you need a warranty repair/replace, and you've been running an upgrade, as long as you sneak the original drive back in, then you can't sell it, or make it an important part of something else. It gets to take up space somewhere "just in case...".

I always hated leaving a stack of perfectly good original drives, doing nothing, "just in case...".

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There is all that to consider. If I ever do buy one of these newfangled "Roamio Plus" thingies, I would prefer to hold off on any upgrade for at least 90 days (assuming I don't also get an extended warranty), which is why I'm hoping that there is some way of upgrading the drive while retaining existing recordings/settings.